


Like Heroes

by Sparrowhawkshadow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age - Various Authors, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: BAMF Orlesians, Betrayal, Book: Dragon Age - Asunder, Book:Dragon Age - Asunder Spoilers, Circle Mages, Circle of Magi, Could Be Canon, Dragon Age Spoilers, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Emotional Manipulation, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Frenemies, Friends to Enemies, I hate to love you, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Language, Lovers To Enemies, Loyalist Mages (Dragon Age), M/M, Mage-Templar Dynamics (Dragon Age), Mage-Templar War (Dragon Age), Mages (Dragon Age), Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Misunderstandings, Not Really Character Death, Orlais (Dragon Age), Orlesians, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Partner Betrayal, Post-Book: Dragon Age - Asunder, Power Imbalance, Pre-Book: Dragon Age - Asunder, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rare Pairings, Reoccuring Bears, Resting Bitchface, Rite of Tranquility, Secret Identity, Seekers, Slow Burn, Spies & Secret Agents, Templars (Dragon Age), The Chantry (Dragon Age), The Game (Dragon Age), Treason, Work In Progress, i love to hate you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:02:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28347357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparrowhawkshadow/pseuds/Sparrowhawkshadow
Summary: ~ After the fall of the Circles the former Knight Commander of the Silver Spire crosses paths with a former ally who ran to Ferelden. Two Orlesian noble-born - one a former Loyalist mage, one a former Templar - both in disgrace and faced with Fereldan forests and hospitality. It's up for debate which is worse. It's really embarassing how well their opinions align. Well, some of them. But that's nothing new. ~
Relationships: (Implied) Greagoir/Wynne (Dragon Age), Mage(s)/Templar(s) (Dragon Age), OC/Knight Commander Eron (Dragon Age), Original Mage Character(s)/Original Templar Character(s), Original Mage Character/Templar Characters (Dragon Age), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added





	1. The Light In The Sky

**Author's Note:**

> ~This contains spoilers for the main plot of Dragon Age II, Dragon Age Inquistition including Trespasser and the other DLCs, David Gaider's novel Asunder, and ESPECIALLY for Cassandra's Personal Quest.  
> It's also not exactly Canon, though it might even be canon-compliant ^^. Though I probably stretched the canon explanation for Seekers to the void and back. Still it /might/ be canon-compliant. If you squint through a Faderift, from Cole's perspective. Maybe.~
> 
> ~ Updates once a month.~

**Chapter 1: The Light In The Sky**

~~~

The sudden flare of green light startled him, and, well.

  
  


History usually is what they call important in hindsight, but at that moment, his first reaction was to blink, half-blinded and still more than half asleep, while trying not to pitch flat on his face in between the bushes, or scratch himself somewhere _really_ uncomfortable. Then, of course, coming wide awake cursing up a half-sleepy storm, in Orlesian as well as a so far undiscovered Fereldan treasure box of swearwords in his possession.

  
  


One learns new things about oneself every day, in a foreign country. Most often, those things aren't complimentary to one's own sorry ass, but someone he knew long ago once said: Knowledge is always a treat. Or something like that. Eron doubts he meant or worded it like canapé after dinner, stolen from the pantry because your lazy ass forgot all about food over a book, or ... something, anyway. He shoves that thought and the thought of the voice that said it, even now in his head, firmly aside.

  
  


He'd have liked to say anything else but that the sight of the sky torn open makes him "uncomfortable", and he gets strange and disbelieving looks from folks who try to talk to him for that. Most shrug it off with his Orlesian accent, thinking he just can't express himself better, or just turn from him, or spit at his feet for that Orlesian accent, anyhow.

  
  


The thing is, he would like to say anything else, and later does, ranging from a scowl and a shiver, once it's really sunk in what happened, to mumbling something about it giving him the creeps, which is also true . That now the _Void itself_ is open for demons to walk out without a by -your-leave, his personal nightmares to be encountered somewhere in those bushes now, not the metaphorical ones anymore. But those first few days, he mostly averts his eyes guiltily. Thankfully, no one gets the idea to suspect him of more than social awkwardness.

  
  


Him, being as in: former Knight Commander Eron, formerly of the Silver Spire, formerly not doing a little thing to stop the mage rebellion. He hadn't seen that coming.

  
  


He hadn't seen the Breach coming either, but somehow he twitches guiltily every time someone bring it up, while he remains stonefaced when he is addressed about the mage rebellion. Funny how conscience works. Not that anyone knows who he is these days, but - somehow, he feels he should be more ashamed of sitting on his hands when the last final straws were added that broke the bronco's back, so to speak.

  
  


Maybe it's more personal when you get up in the middle of the night, from your semi-comfortable sleeping roll stuck on a rock, and well. There's always at last one rock or root, he's discovered, it's the symbolism of camping or something, and it doesn't help moving it, it only makes it _worse_ \- just as if there were a demon out somewhere on the principle of camping to make sure. The things is this: There you are, staring at nothing and thinking longingly about your nice warm bed, until you end up really staring at the void itself and pissing all over your boot. Maybe that should be a warning sign or something, or an encompassing symbol of life. He's decided to ignore that sort of prediction, it's just too depressing otherwise.

  
  


The thing is, what he thinks after the first moment of clueless staring, and then the dazed thought of "pretty light like green fireflies in winter" - that sort of nonesense - the thought that makes him feel the most culpable though somehow no one sees it on his face, somehow, even when he thinks it's written on his forehead in a big glowing red sign, it's simply this:

  
  


_I didn't do that. It wasn't_ me _who's guilty of creating_ that _._

  
  


_Not even by sitting on my hand_ _s_ _. Not even by pissing my own boot._ Though that was ... a shame, really. But it was his _personal_ shame, and his alone, moist and smelly as it may be later on.

  
  


This time.

  
  


The last time? Oh, he might not have blown up a chantry. But he'd sat on the already smouldering ruins of another one that was ready to burn, and he didn't do a thing. Seeker Lambert was quite right in that, if in little else.

  
  


He's guiltily glad it wasn't his fault this time, and that makes him feel uncomfortable. So Eron does what he always does when he feels uncomfortable: run _towards_ the thing and try to see who it might bite. He wouldn't have become a templar otherwise. Maybe, he's also curious.

  
  


He's not going to say he wants to _help_ people. He's forsaken that right too long ago, when he really _could_ have helped. He's no hero. But, well. Maybe he wants to not be too shitty a person, that might just do.

  
  


No more pissing his own boots, that's his new resolution. It's not much, but it's something to strive for. He'll settle for that.

  
  


Maybe once he's managed that he can try to be a hero. Again. Later, maybe.

  
  


Sometime in the future. He hopes this - his - mess here will have become history by then.

  
  


He cleans his boots - both of them, since he's already at it, and they needed it - and good deed done, he's feeling generous enough about himself that he sleeps like a baby for the rest of the night, waking up early and packing in better spirits than yesterday until his eyes fall on the sky and he sees the jagged tear in it, green and dark and swirling with all the anticipation of a coming nightmare and thinks: Oh shit.

So that is real.

  
  


So he starts walking towards it.

  
  


No more pissing his own boot after all.

  
  


~~~


	2. After The Fact

  
  


~~~

  
There are an extraordinary large number of birds at the Crossroads.  
  
That's the first thing he notices. Most of them are crows, not surprisingly. They are waiting for carrion. But there's also a small number of not yet eaten, half-wild pidgeons that somehow escaped the executioner's block of hungry refugees and decided to try their luck in the wild, scavenging food from unwatched grainsacks and darkening, shrinking berries off craggly shrubs in an eternal race between them and hungry children. Eron mentally overlays this image to his father's chevalier tales and cousin Radewick's romantic paintings and comes to the unsurprising conclusion that war fought by desperate people rarely makes them any less desperate, only more destitute.

Speaking of crows and pidgeon, and maybe, overall altogether too romantic notions and their pretty pictures too:  
There's a knight Templar standing at the crossroads. Well, a former Templar. But aren't they all former, now, one way or another?

Eron winces as he sees even at the entire length of the mostly improvised settlement that the elderly man has painted over his sword of mercy engraved in the cuirass with a crude black eye. It doesn't look like he'll ever be an artist - or paint children's toys for that matter, or even _compete_ with children painting toys - but the symbol is still unmistakable. Enough for cold to shiver down Eron spine not caused by the wind streaming of the Ramtops directly into his face, blowing dust, snowscent and goats' fur and dog's breath over the rank grease of unwashed hair and smoke-saturated old clothes.

  
One way or another, the Templars are bad news to him. Evon makes himself scarce quickly after that, his stomach's rumbling temporarily stilled by queasy unease. He's not sure whether that is fear or guilt, and he's not keen to find out. At least he's still alive. Live to fight another day, and all that.

Or just ... live. That's enough.

  
But there was this promise he made.

  
Well. He can't keep it if he's dead, he reasons, and decides to think about morals and their machinations somewhere he'll be able to think unencumbered by them, when, say, no would-be Seeker is breathing down his neck. It doesn' really matter whether the symbol is real or not: Eron has had enough with one kind of idealistic idiots with swords, and he's not keen to find another of the same stock.

  
  


~

  
When Eron return next several days later, the Templar who looked like a Seeker is gone. Eron doesn't know whether he was killed or driven of, whether it was Rebel Mages or Rebel Templars or just any one Fereldan farmer who had enough of people raiding his possessions for no good reason or profit for the Feredans themselves, and run him through with a pitchfork or run him off with his dogs.

Maybe he is Fereldan and went home or just decided like Eron to hide out out of uniform. Then again, that doesn't seem likely with a Templar who'll go as far as to paint the Seeker's Allseeing Eye on his chest like he thinks all Templars need to be purged of corruption, or something equally idealistically murderous. Maybe, Eron shouldn't want that man to wander around withut uniform and sign of allegiance. That thought doesn't agree with him at all, like something bad he'd swallowed, oh, long ago. Eron wonders what happens with all the Fereldans and Mages who were Fereldans - who were Orlesians, for that matter, everyone must come from _somewhere_.

  
  


Where did they all _go_? Where did they _want_ to go when they lived most of their lives in the Circles? Abnd where did they want to go as soon as they found that the parents and homes they'd left behind long ago had been left behind, and there was nowhere to go back to?

Maybe it's like Eron who comes from _somewhere_ but by now that somewhere is somewhere else, always. Here, unfortunately, is far less metaphorical and mostly miserably in lack of... most things, and food and shelter needs to be scrounged up.

He hopes some of them made it home, wherever that may be, but he knows very well who'll not find one. It feels ... chilling to know. He tugs his cloak higher, looks at the crows, and the enterprising pidgeons, and decides he'll focus on looking, rather than stand here freezing.

  
~~  
  
Several days and a turn of the wind for the colder later, Eron is munching on a sliver of hard cheese and some stale bread he begged of one of the Crossroad's many visitors. This one had been a trader, who was apparently glad to get rid of a rapidly aging supply in exchange for promise of protection against looters and the like. Templars like him, Eron thinks, but doesn't say. He has a feeling this kind of honesty won't serve him here any better than it would have at the Orlesian court. Eron instead tried to uphold his side of the bargain and saw him safely on the way, along with two others carrying swords who where also kind enough _not_ to rob him or Eron either after they all left the trader to his business on the road to Redcliffe.  
  
Eron wandered back on his own, wary of the mass of people milling that's getting more and more desperate and day yet also wary of any groups outside it taking him for easy prey, and he _would_ be. Templars might be an elite force but an arrow can still kill, and Fereldans are _all_ about arrows. Maybe that's an Orlesian trauma, but that doesn't make it any less true. In fact, Eron has seen an extraordinary large number of strapping lasses and lads toting long wooden sticks of various martial occupations. Maybe it's just the wildlife and the endless mountains that forces you to run miles and miles all and somehow always inconveniently uphill to get either away or _to_ said wildlife, but Eron's been a bit preoccupied with the sort of glares he gets as soon as he opens his mouth. His Fereldan might be usable, thanks to the Circle's tendencies to drag mages around the continent so they'd not serve near their homes and run away as often - unless you had influental family who could pay in money or connections, that was. Somehow, weirdly, all the Fereldans always ended up at the Silver Spire smack-dab in the middle of the Orlesian heart. Maybe it's just his impression. Maybe Knight-Commander Greagoir just liked fucking with Eron, he knows they've never seen eye to eye.

  
Maybe it's because Eron once said something fancy at one of the four-yearly congregations of the commanders that Greagoir didn't like because it sounded too much like his own father and Greagoir has decided to somehow detest Orlesians even though he's one himself. (Eron detests Orlesians but he's allowed because he also doesn't pretend he isn't one). Maybe it's because Eron used to officially admit to his mage lover, which makes it hilarious and not at all hypocritical because Eron knows the sort of rumours that follow Greagoir. He's not sure that the rumours can't even name the happy or unhappy tryst is a good thing in that the mage in question was particularily happy or unhappy enough not to tell.

  
Eron's also no fool and has stared long enough into Greagoirs very, very striking eyes and frowning face at exactly these conventions from consternation at each other and he's also spent enough time with a not to be named young Fereldan mage - raised in the Chantry, no less - in meetings one-on-one frowning in exactly the same way from a very similar face - minus the grey in his beard - to easily accept that sort of judgement from that man in particular. Maybe he should feel flattered that Greagoir trusts him that much in the end - or maybe Greagoir is just a bastard to everyone who's even partly Orlesian, and that was punishment for both Eron and the kid for merely existing as an eyesore in Greagoir's nice flat moral world, who knows.

  
At least Eron never tried to annull a Circle, and then subsequently got kicked out of said Circle accordingly. He just got kicked out (which is a fancy way of saying he ran because he was intelligent enough to knew what would happen, but not intelligent enough to know long enough beforehand to actually try and head it off). At least he didn't try to murder off all his charges, his lover, he assumes, included. Admittedly, with abominations, he should cut Greagoir some slack, but he _likes_ judging the man when he gets so much judging back.

  
And the thought of Lucide, and murder, in the same sentence makes him feel queasy, and rather like he'd like to not think about it.  
So he'd taken the job with the trader after the man remarked he'd looked capable and also had a sword, which Eron supposes translates to the same thing for the sort of people that thinks carrying a sword is the same as handling one, which here seems to be ... most of everyone, and Eron isn't being actively mean and Orlesian right now. Just ... most Fereldans get a lot of training shooting and stabbing bears with arrows and boarspears and not much else, and then when it comes to fighting they do the same thing, and it _looks_ like the same thing, which makes Eron want to _cry_. Admittedly, now seeing the way they live - bears - he can somewhat sympathise. It really does take up all of your time.  
  
He also thinks of trying to find some less perishable sustenance, but hunting with a sword is a ludicrous, except when it comes to bears where the case would be more accurately described as being hunted, he thinks. Even so, he'd rather take a boar spear or, say, avoid the whole thing if he gets a choice. So far, he's seen some brown bears wandering up a stream near Dennet's farm, and quickly turned back the way he came then, even if the horse breeder later informed him that they were likely merely there for the fish.  
  
Of course they were.  
  
~~  
  
So now he's idly munching on too-hard bread and the rather fragrant tough cheese and half-dreaming about how it seems now to have become a good thing his chevalier father insisted his son be a figure of heroism an learn how to hunt and he's wondering about how to find a bow and that the Freeldans would of course never part with one of their famous craft's masterworks for an Orlesian - and he's half forgotten that not seeing doesn't mean not _being seen_.  
  
– That‘s of course when he sets eyes on a silver-blond head, ponytail shaggy and falling out of a tie, a sharp nose and narrow eyes in a thin face - and for once, he doesn‘t startle immediately.  
  
Eron takes his time for once – takes the time to look instead of taking an unvoluntary step back and calmly regards the stranger instead of the breath catching in his chest, in his throat. He's had his heart jump half out of his breast so often that by now he's started getting used to the seemingly endless influx of pale blondes Ferelden seems to offer even if, consciously, he's aware that technically that's not more here than in Orlais really. Instead he takes the time to take him in.  
  
He knows who he‘s looking for, after all, but – it should be unimportant now. There's a hole in the sky, and half of Thedas at war and more to come with Tevinter at the Orlesian border, what with the civil war and all. The fate of one man shouldn't matter. Lucide would have been the first to tell him that.

  
Thin lips, pursed, long fingers, but strong with thick knuckles and the backs of them sunburnt. A face covered in a growth of beard that is a relatively neat cut, short, going by Ferelden‘s shaggy standarts. There‘s the kind of spotty brown-flaked tan on the nose and on his forehead and the soft skin under his eyes to suggest a former sunburn, a tan earned at brisk mountain air too far up for clouds to provide much cover. He's tall, more lean than built but the man looks strong, and there‘s a simply blade at his belt – simple, but of good quality, if Eron is any judge while it‘s covered with its sheat and at a distance. He moves well, the blade an extension of himself, no tangling his legs and knocking into people‘s shin with the scabbard with this one. He's not part of recently outfitted Fereldan militia, definitly not a farmer just outfitted with a sword when he's only been used to axe and maybe a boar spear. It can't be ... - but - . Anyway, this is a trained soldier.

  
He‘s still in a simply blue tunic and dirt-brown trousers, the sort of quick-bleaching, greyish version that Fereldans deem colours – respectable here, but dull. He clearly has some comfortable living, but not rich – not poor either, as his sword tells. It‘s a narrow blade for the standarts here – almost like a heavy rapier – infact …

  
The grip is that of an Orlesian weapon, and Eron sidles closer, meandering behind the upper huts to get a better look from where she's less likely to be more easily spotted. There's a hunter bemoaning the state of the roads and Eron knows what he means, has wondered about the strangely well outfitted bandits himself and nearly run afoul of them, but right now his interest is caught up somewhere else. If there‘s a man with Orlesian connection here they might know him, and he must know if he‘s suspected – he snuck out of the encampment the day after arriving, when it became clear that the templars were just as much after murder as the apostates, and also that it was unlikely they would let him leave, at least not with his weapons – or not intact, in fact.

  
He knows he's obsessed, slightly, but fear ever sits sharp in his gut. Narrowly getting out of the Templar's grasp hasn't helped that paranoia at all. He‘d rather not anyone recognise him – though the man doesn‘t look bulky enough to be a former templar, there‘s definitly something of a long-time soldier or at least a fighter about him, the straight but easy way he holds himself, the weapon, the way his eyes, pale and blue, flit quickly to the bushes at the roadside of the crossroads as if expecting an ambush even with hundreds of refugees about – and from what Eron has seen, it‘s not unreasonable. Mages and templars roam the woods -  
  
Mages.

The blonde man is not in a robe, it‘s a woodsman's garb if anything – but suddenly the line of his shoulders, the wary glances and the economic way he turns makes sense. He looks like a man used to battle, but also very much like a man used to being the prey, not the hunter.  
  
Eron has seen the stance often enough – has had a mage as a lover, who was maybe the best battlemage he knew, and a better fighter than Eron. Certainly a better fighter than Eron then - now ... if he's still alive even - Eron crushes that thought with the mental discipline of a templar, former or not. He focuses instead on the potential danger.  
  
  
In fact, the blue eyes, they remind Eron a little of Lucide. It's a colour so pale it's not like the sky but like the sun painting shadows in treacherous ice where it cracks under sudden pressure and swallows you before you ever know – . But, when he's not careful – everything reminds Eron of Lucide.  
  
The man turns fully to face him, stares straight at him as if he'd known Eron was there all along, and -  
There's a sharp intelligence in pale eyes, wary interest, and Eron registers only after a moment when he manages to tear his eye away from the intense gaze that seems to fix him where he stands,  
No, it -  
He has a beard, he's in Ferelden, it can‘t be -  
He has a beard. Yet Eron would recognise that gaze in a hundred years.

It‘s Lucide, still.  
  
~  
  
Then the man turns on his heel and walks off.  
There is nothing Eron can do but follow, is there? Lucide clearly knows it, too, because he doesn‘t stop, doesn‘t look back – as bloody always. And Eron always follows. Except that one time, because Lucide didn‘t order him not to, he asked for it – the only one thing he ever asked for, and then. Eron has regretted it ever since.  
Of course he follows.  
  
~~~  


  
  


  
  



End file.
